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Tag Archives: meat eating

Tremendomeatatarianism and Climate Change

03 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by Dwight Furrow in Contemporary Food Culture, The Ethics of Eating

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climate change, meat eating

unicorn meat

Photo by Brad Smith

According to a new report put together by the British think tank Chatham House, our chances of limiting climate change depend on limiting our consumption of meat. But fears of a backlash against trying to change people’s eating habits prevents environmentalists from making the case.

The global livestock industry produces more greenhouse gas emissions than all cars, planes, trains and ships combined, but a worldwide survey by Ipsos MORI in the report finds twice as many people think transport is the bigger contributor to global warming.

“Preventing catastrophic warming is dependent on tackling meat and dairy consumption, but the world is doing very little,” said Rob Bailey, the report’s lead author. “A lot is being done on deforestation and transport, but there is a huge gap on the livestock sector. There is a deep reluctance to engage because of the received wisdom that it is not the place of governments or civil society to intrude into people’s lives and tell them what to eat.”

Indeed it is enormously difficult to get people to radically change their eating habits. The solution is to encourage small changes to our diet, the cumulative effect of which would significantly reduce the carbon footprint of meat production.

My personal approach is to adopt “tremendomeatatarianism”, a term that I believe first appeared in this comic strip. I eat meat only when I think it will be really good—when I want to make a special recipe or I’m eating at a restaurant that I expect will do an excellent job.

When you think about it, much of the meat we eat is just ordinary—a fast food burger, a diner steak, a humdrum cut from the supermarket, indifferently prepared for convenient, quick consumption. There is nothing special about preserving and perpetuating that experience, even if you really like meat. Surely it is not a sacrifice to give up such an undistinguished experience. And it opens up a whole new world of wonderful vegetables to eat.

Turning toward quality and getting rid of the run-of-the-mill in our lives can make a big difference, personally and globally.

And I would really be down with Unicorn Meat. Do you know anyone who sells it? I’m in San Francisco at the moment. I understand you can get anything you want here.

Meat Eaters Take Heart

10 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by Dwight Furrow in Contemporary Food Culture, Food Science, Philosophy of Food and Wine

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Tags

aesthetics of food, meat eating

meat

Image by James Vaughan Creative Commons License

The news about the future of meat consumption is all bad. It is cruel to animals, excessively resource intensive, damaging to the environment, and produces greenhouse gases that significantly contribute to climate change.

There is little evidence that human beings will voluntarily become vegetarians en masse. So what is the answer?

According to this essay at Symposion it is “cultured meat”.

Muscle-specific stem cells are taken from a cow and are encouraged to self-organize into muscle tissue, which is then grown in the lab, eventually finding its way to your plate. It is biologically identical to meat that comes from a cow.

I suspect the “yuk” factor will be difficult to overcome but I fail to see why. It isn’t fake meat—it’s the real thing derived from a different causal process.

“Test-tube babies” are real persons, cars manufactured by robots are real cars, seedless fruits are propagated using a culturing process, so why the “yuk” factor with manufactured beef?

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